1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image recording apparatus including a medium supply cassette, such as a printer, a copy machine, and a facsimile machine. The invention more particularly relates to an image recording apparatus having a restricting member that prevents folding or buckling of a recording medium, when the recording medium is fed from a medium supply cassette set in the image recording apparatus into a feed path, and when the recording medium is fed along the feed path.
2. Description of Related Art
In an image recording apparatus such as a printer, a copy machine, and a facsimile machine, there is conventionally employed an arrangement, where a medium supply cassette is removably inserted substantially in a horizontal direction into a housing to be set in a lower portion of the housing, and a slant separator plate is disposed on the downstream side of the medium supply cassette with respect to a direction of the insertion of the medium supply cassette, so that a topmost one of stacked recording media, e.g., cut sheets of paper, is sequentially separated from the rest of the recording media, by cooperation of a medium pickup roller and the slant separator plate, and forcibly fed into a feed path extending in a sideways U-like shape from an upper end of the slant separator plate, along which the recording medium is fed to an image recording portion in the form of an inkjet recording head that operates to record an image or a dot pattern on the recording medium. Such an arrangement is disclosed in JP-A-2002-249248 (first publication) and especially in FIG. 1 thereof, for instance.
In the arrangement of the first publication, a pair of feeder rollers consisting of a drive roller and a nip roller are disposed at an entrance end of the U-shaped feed path, that is, a position adjacent to the upper end of the slant separator plate, while a pair of register rollers are disposed on an upstream side of the image recording portion, that is, a terminal end of the U-shaped feed path. When a leading edge of the recording medium fed out by the pickup roller is first nipped between the feeder rollers, the forcibly driving the recording medium by the pickup roller is terminated. When the leading edge of the recording medium as being fed by the feeder rollers reaches the register rollers, the recording medium is adjusted in orientation so that the leading edge thereof becomes parallel to an axis of the register rollers.
Meanwhile, JP-A-10-167486 (second publication) and JP-A-11-59942 (third publication) disclose an arrangement where a presser member, e.g., plate spring, is disposed in a lower portion of a housing in order to hold down a top surface of a stack of the recording media in a medium supply cassette.
In the arrangement disclosed in the second and third publications, when the medium supply cassette is inserted into the lower portion of the housing substantially in the horizontal direction and stopped at an accommodating position of the medium supply cassette in the housing, the stack of the recording media in the medium supply cassette tends to continue to move, by inertia, in the direction in which the medium supply cassette is inserted, but the presser member holding down the stack of the recording media gives a resisting force to the inertia, thereby preventing the recording media from running over a front or leading end of the medium supply cassette. However, the arrangement is disadvantageous in that the resisting force moves the recording medium in a direction opposite to the inserting direction. When the pickup roller is operated while such an undesirable phenomenon occurs, the operation of the slant separator plate to separate each recording medium from the others is not accomplished, thereby causing problems such as that a plurality of recording media are fed at a time, and shortage in an amount of feeding of the recording medium.
On the other hand, in the arrangement of the first publication, the pickup roller in the vicinity of a bottom plate of the medium supply cassette pushes the recording medium obliquely upward from the slant separator plate so that the leading edge of the recording medium fed along the U-shaped feed path is brought into contact with the register rollers with the recording medium deflecting into a U-like shape between the pickup roller and the register rollers. By the contact with the register rollers, the recording medium is adjusted in orientation and skew thereof is eliminated. However, when the amount of the recording media stacked in the medium supply cassette is small (for instance, when merely several recording media are stacked), or when the recording medium is so pliable that the recording medium can not be smoothly fed into the U-shaped feed path from the medium supply cassette and along the slant separator plate, and an intermediate portion of the pliable recording medium buckles to come far away from the slant separator plate, the above-mentioned effect of adjusting the orientation of the recording medium or eliminating the skew of the recording medium is not ensured.